


The Darkness In Them

by rosymamacita



Series: Arcadia [4]
Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Anger, Arcadia - Freeform, Canon Compliant, Confessions, F/M, bellarke reunion, finally talking, hug, post 3.04
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-14
Updated: 2016-02-14
Packaged: 2018-05-20 13:03:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,109
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6007203
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rosymamacita/pseuds/rosymamacita
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Clarke comes back to Arcadia after her time in Polis, after the mountain is destroyed and the grounder camp demolished. Bellamy doesn't want to talk to her. She's made it clear, he thinks, that she's chosen Lexa over him. She's left them. </p><p>But it's truth time for Clarke, and she knows she's back where she belongs.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Darkness In Them

**Author's Note:**

> I woke up with this story in my head today and thought it would be a short drabble. I am apparently incapable of doing that. So here you are with a Valentines day Bellarke reunion... not really hearts and roses though.

Please say you don’t want a war, Bellamy,” Clarke stared at Bellamy, after she cornered him in a room alone. He hadn’t wanted to be alone with her when she came back to Arcadia. He was too angry, he was too ashamed. But that didn’t really matter. Clarke got what she wanted.

Bellamy snorted. “We’ve been at war since we got to Earth.”

Clarke tilted her head in that way she had.”You don’t want war, Bellamy. I know you don’t. You don’t want to kill them and you don’t want to see your people die. None of this has to happen.”

He slowly shook his head at her. “I have to protect my people. You weren’t here, Clarke. You weren’t the one who got that call from Raven saying that the mountain was gone, and all those people, the people you were supposed to be protecting, had died. I really don’t know what you expect me to say to you.”

“Bellamy,” she said again. “Bellamy.” He really didn’t know why she kept saying his name and he wished she would stop. “I expect you—“ she shook her head. “ I WANT you to say that you’re with us.”

The words felt like a blow to the gut. He stepped back from her with a jerk. “Us? Who’s us?”

Clarke blinked and he watched her face drain of color. And then watched it fill back in with pain.

He glared at her, the muscles in his jaw so tight he was worried he’d crack a tooth. He saw the tears glisten in her eyes and thought, ‘good,’ but he had to clench his hand to his side to keep from reaching out to her. 

“I’m sorry,” she said, and the tears had reached her voice.

“I bet Lexa said I’m sorry, for leaving us all to die in that mountain, for betraying us, betraying you, for making us kill everyone in there. I guess to you, I’m sorry makes up for everything that’s happened. You stayed there.” He was proud of himself for the way his words cut. Proud of their coldness. “I’m sorry means nothing, Clarke. It’s just words. You chose her.”

Clarke still had tears in her eyes, but her color had come back, and the anguish had smoothed. She stared into his eyes and didn’t speak. 

He took a deep breath. Then another. It was getting harder to breathe and he didn’t want to be here anymore. He had things to do. He had to protect his people. He turned away to leave.

Clarke’s hand snapped out and grabbed his wrist, locking in place tightly around his bones. He didn’t remember her having such a strong grip. He stopped and looked at where she held him. Remembered another time her hand locked around his wrist as he held her over a spike pit. He felt his heart shatter inside of him.

“Don’t touch me.”

She didn’t let go.

He looked back up at her and her eyes were fierce. He twisted his wrist away from her. “Don’t.”

She shook her head and took a step closer to him. He wouldn’t back down, he refused.

“I’m sorry I left, Bellamy,” she said and put her hand on his shoulder. “I shouldn’t have left you.”

Her touch burned. He gasped and stepped back. She followed, shaking her head. “I never forgave Lexa, Bellamy. I never chose her.” This time she reached for his hand and he didn’t have the strength to pull back. She took his hand and covered it with both of hers. “I chose us, when I stayed, so that I could protect us from her, so that I could give us a place on the ground and so that we don’t always have to be at war with the grounders. I did it for us.”

Bellamy shook his head. He believed her, he did, so he wasn’t sure why he was shaking his head.

“I don’t regret staying in Polis. I had to be there, even if I didn’t want to be. It was the best for our people. Because when I say us, I mean us. Our people. You. Me. I never left us, Bellamy.”

He pulled his hand out of hers. It wasn’t hard, she wasn’t holding tight anymore. Bellamy turned around and walked away, needing to get away.

Clarke was right there. She grabbed his arm and yanked him back around to face her. She was standing so close to him. He glared down at her, angry.

“You did leave, Clarke.”

She hung her head for a moment before looking back up at him, through her lashes. “And I’m sorry. I’m sorry for leaving you at the gates. I’ve had months to regret that. I wish I had stayed with you, but I felt like I couldn’t.”

He shook his head again. None of that mattered. She left. “And you left when you chose Polis over your people.”

Her eyes narrowed and her lips flattened out. She looked over his shoulder into nothing, as if remembering. “I didn’t want to. But leaving with you would have been a disaster. They would never have stopped attacking us, I couldn’t. I needed them to make us the Thirteenth Tribe and then I needed to make sure Lexa didn’t stab us in the back. Or any of them.”

“And you couldn’t have told me what you were planning? You had to send me away like I was some sort of…of—“

“I had to!” she said. “I couldn’t explain. I couldn’t talk to you the way I wanted to. I couldn’t let them see— Every minute you were there, your life was in danger.”

“So was yours, Wanheda.”

She shook her head, her brows drawn together. “You had a sword hanging over your head because they knew, Bellamy, they knew. They were afraid of me, and you were a weapon against me. The longer you were there, the more likely someone would kill you and I couldn’t let that happen. Do you understand? I did not chose Lexa over you. I chose your life. I chose my people. I chose us.”

Her face was flushed now, and her eyes snapped. She stared up at him as if trying to will him to believe her. 

“They knew?” Bellamy asked. “What did they know? Did we have some plot that I was supposed to just understand through your deep stares in a crowded room of ambassadors?” He scoffed. Bellamy rolled his eyes.

Clarke shoved his shoulder and turned away. He blinked. Were they at the point where they could shove each other around? Had they ever been? He took a step after her, one hand on her shoulder, turned her back to him. “What did they know, Clarke?”

Clarke looked into his face, horrified. “That I’m in love with you,” she said and then rushed on before he could properly process. “Roan knew ever since you found me in that cave and I begged for your life with mine. He was the son of the Ice Queen. I thought it would only be a matter of time before it got back to her, and she had Costia executed to send a message to Lexa, simply because she was hers. Lexa always said it. Love was a weakness, and to her it was. Something to be exploited. She knew it before I did even. She’s always known it. And she wanted me. I couldn’t let Lexa anywhere near you. I couldn’t put you into that danger.”

Bellamy was staring at her. He felt numb. “What?”

Clarke laughed. She wiped a tear that had fallen to her cheek. “I’m sorry. I know you hate me now and I know I deserve it. All I can do is apologize for what I’ve done. I’ve spent the last three months missing you and regretting leaving even though I needed to go, needed to be alone. All that time with myself thinking, and you were always there, in my thoughts, in my heart. They call me the great Wanheda, Commander of Death, Mountain Slayer, ” Clarke said. “And I’m just some lonely, heart broken girl hiding from what she’s done.” She hung her head.

Bellamy’s head was buzzing with thoughts and feelings that didn’t seem to be able to land. He brought his other hand to her shoulders and held her straight. “Clarke,” he said. “What?” His heart was racing.

Her eyes met his and the darkness in them frightened him. Because he knew the darkness, and he knew how it felt, how it ate at your soul. Her darkness was bitter and self hating and he knew it so well. 

“I’m sorry. I know it’s not fair. I know I left and you found someone and she died horribly in the mountain and it’s just not fair.” Her voice choked up. “She deserved better and you deserved better.”

“You’re in love with me?” His heart swelled with her words but his head was spinning. He could only hold her, frozen between the two, between loving her and being so angry with her he never wanted to speak to her again. How could she? Now?

She straightened her shoulders under his grip and took a deep breath, her gaze firm. “I love you more than anyone, Bellamy.”

He dropped his hands to his sides. Numb. Definitely numb. “What am I supposed to do with that?”

Clarke laughed, but it was half way to a sob. “Nothing, Bellamy. I just needed you to know. I left you, and I regretted it, but I had to do it. And I never, not once, put Lexa over you, not since I sent you into the Mountain to save our friends.”

“That was my plan, not yours.”

She looked at him mournfully. “Lexa told me that love was weakness. And that’s why I sent you in. Because I was afraid of losing you, and I thought it made me weak. But Lexa was wrong, love doesn’t make me weak, it makes me strong. I sent you away from Polis to keep you safe because I love you.”

“Don’t do that.” The words barked from his mouth.

“Sorry, Blake. Too late. I already love you.”

He stepped up to her, close, too close, but he couldn’t help it. He grabbed the front of her shirt to keep her from stepping back. “Don’t send me away to keep me safe. Don’t do that.”

She blinked up at him, her eyes suddenly wide and they flitted around his face, settling on his lips for a moment, in a way that made a fire start burning in his gut. He stepped back. Cleared his throat. “I can’t lose you, Clarke.” His voice was husky. “I can’t lose you, do you understand?”

“You won’t,” she said breathlessly. “You haven’t. I’m right here.”

He closed his eyes and took a deep breath and it shuddered when he let it out.

“Bellamy?” she asked, and he felt a light touch on his wrist. “Are you okay?”

“It’s my fault, Clarke,” he looked at her, “what happened to Gina. What happened at the grounder camp.”

Unlike everyone else around him, Clarke did not tell him it wasn’t. She ran her hand up his arm and squeezed his shoulder. “They’re our responsibility,” she said, and raised her eyebrows. She understood.

His gut pinched. “All of them.” The grounders too. And he’d known it when he went with Pike, he had just been so angry and lost. 

“We need to fix this, Clarke.”

Clarke’s breath shook as she drew it in, relieved. “We will, Bellamy. We’ll figure it out. Just know that I won’t leave you, even if I can’t always physically be with you. We’re together, okay?”

Bellamy raised his palm to her cheek, holding her face there, staring into her eyes. They were still dark, like his own, but they were warm. He nodded, and then, hesitantly, pulled her in for a hug. She melted into his arms, her lips resting against the skin of his neck. He could feel hot drops of tears on his shoulder.

“Clarke,” he whispered into her hair, “I love you, too.”

She gasped against his skin. 

He combed his fingers through her hair. “But I can’t—“ he said, “not until I’ve fixed this.”

She nodded. “We’ll fix it,” she said, and he felt her lips press against his skin, just at the edge of his collar. 

Her kiss sent a shock of pain and joy through him. All they’d lost, all they’d done, all that could still happen, but mostly hope, and a reason to keep fighting.

“Together,” he said.


End file.
